Week 11 of the college football season featured two thrillers at the top of the Big Ten. Indiana and Oregon both needed last-minute scores to avoid gut-punch losses. Those two games took center stage in the afternoon. At night, Virginia and Louisville both lost at home to throw the ACC into further chaos and increase the chances that the ACC will be a one-bid league in the College Football Playoff. What other CFP storylines exist after Week 11? Let's tackle those topics and more in our latest "What We Learned" feature:

Indiana and Oregon are similar in a lot of ways, mostly good

Indiana and Oregon are not complete teams. They have looked ordinary for portions of their bigger games. They both struggled at Penn State to varying degrees. Their quarterbacks are solid but not spectacular. Yet, those quarterbacks -- Fernando Mendoza of IU and Dante Moore of Oregon -- are poised and tough competitors who stand tall under pressure. They both threw interceptions on Saturday, but shrugged them off to deliver last-minute game-winning scores.

Fernando Mendoza and Dante Moore are not elite quarterbacks. They make mistakes that put their teams in peril. However, they bounce back and deliver when it counts. This is why I compared Mendoza not to an all-time-great quarterback such as Charlie Ward, Danny Wuerffel, or Peyton Manning, but to 1992 Alabama national champion quarterback Jay Barker. Mendoza is the best of the best, not as a pure quarterback prospect, but as a college football winner. That is the more precise and apt comparison to make.

Texas Tech is the clear Big 12 favorite

Texas Tech demolished BYU. The Red Raiders' defense is nasty. Texas Tech has a favorable closing schedule and is therefore the team most likely to make the Big 12 Championship Game. The Red Raiders will watch BYU and Cincinnati play later this month, with the winner likely to face Tech for the Big 12 title and a spot in the playoff. Texas Tech is getting a significant return on its offseason investments. Good for the Red Raiders. They made an effort to get better, and it shows. We should all want to see that in a cutthroat environment. Why are we here if we aren't trying hard to win big? Every power conference program should have that same aspiration. The Texas Tech hate has never made sense for that reason.

ACC football mess

Virginia lost at home to Wake Forest. Louisville lost at home to Cal. This conference is one big jumble, and if Georgia Tech fails to beat Georgia, it will be hard to find any team other than Miami -- provided the Hurricanes win out and finish 10-2 -- which deserves real consideration for an at-large bid. Miami going 10-2, if it happens, will create some very interesting conversations in early December.

Goodbye, Mountain West

What an utterly forgettable year for Mountain West football. The configuration of the conference will change drastically next year with the new-look Pac-12. This was the MWC's final chance to make a major statement, and it has flopped. San Diego State getting drilled at Hawaii ends the Mountain West's bid for a CFP spot. The American will get that playoff berth instead.

Jedd Fisch coaching carousel plot twist

Jedd Fisch of Washington was viewed as a candidate for the UCLA job. After Washington face-planted and got knocked out of the playoff race at Wisconsin, Fisch's UCLA candidacy might be toast. However, if you think -- as some people do -- that the UCLA rumors were merely an attempt by his camp to drive up his compensation package at Washington and force the school to pay him more, the loss to Wisconsin might actually make Washington less inclined to pay up ... which could have the effect of driving him to UCLA if he gets frustrated by a lack of a pay bump. This is an interesting little plot twist from the coaching carousel. Reminder: We wrote an extensive primer on that carousel. The fun is just starting.

Speaking of the carousel:

Mike Norvell digs a deeper ditch at Florida State

The school wants to make things work, but Mike Norvell is making it harder for Florida State to retain him. The loss to Clemson will increase pressure on the school to find the money needed to push Norvell out and find an elite replacement. If FSU opens up, both Florida State and Florida will be open, as will LSU and Penn State. This carousel could get wilder -- much, much wilder.

SEC with five CFP teams? It's very possible

The SEC put only three teams in the CFP last season. Now, we could be looking at five teams in 2025. A team to watch in this regard is Texas. If the Longhorns can split this Georgia-Texas A&M pair of games and finish 9-3, they would have the high-end wins needed to overcome three losses. A 9-3 Texas probably gets in over 10-2 Miami if that's the last spot in the field. 9-3 Texas might also bump out 10-2 Notre Dame, though that might be a tougher decision for the committee. If the SEC does get five teams in, that would mean at least one three-loss team is getting in the field.

The college football rule book needs a lot of work

You probably saw or read about two plays from the weekend that made you study the rule book. One was the USC fake punt against Northwestern. The other was the Oregon safety against Iowa on the bad punt snap.

First, on the USC fake punt: The rule is that two players who play the same position can't wear the same number. USC, therefore, should have been penalized for what it did. However, the rule book does not specify who or what a punter is. To be more precise about this, a player is not a punter just because he stands 12-15 yards behind the line of scrimmage on fourth down. There is no rule saying a player is not a quarterback just because of where he stands at the snap. That's an assumption, not a firm definition. USC can say, legitimately, that it had a quarterback -- not a punter -- on the field, and therefore did not commit a penalty.

A punter is a punter only if or when that player actually punts the ball. USC can say that it exploited a loophole -- a lack of precise detail -- in the rule book. It had a QB on the field, not a punter. Only if two USC players both punted a ball would the Trojans have been guilty of having two jersey numbers at the same position. The rule book just needs to be more precise.

On the Oregon-Iowa safety: The referees made the correct ruling. The Iowa punter batting the ball with his hand on the 1-yard line was not a penalty. Illegal batting applies to end-zone fouls and to batting the ball forward (to get a first down or touchdown, as shown in the 1978 "Holy Roller" play between the Raiders and Chargers). Illegal batting does not apply to batting the ball backward outside the end zone.

Illegal kicking, however, applies everywhere on the field. One cannot kick a rolling or bouncing ball anywhere. The rule book's lack of consistency -- batting and kicking not being treated the same way -- should be modified this coming offseason.

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This article originally appeared on College Sports Wire: Indiana and Oregon resilience headline what we learned in college football Week 11

Reporting by Matt Zemek, College Sports Wire / College Sports Wire

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